Green Grid Radio

Engaging and transformative reporting on the environment, energy, and sustainability

Monthly Archives: May 2013


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S3E6: Is the Sustainability Movement an Activist Movement?

The Green Grid Radio team thought about how American culture has changed since the 1960s in the most recent episode of Season 3. In looking at the sustainability movements on campus, we draw out (or try to draw out) some of the societal forces that have changed the way students tackle environmental problems. Stanford Sociology Professor Doug McAdam joined us to weigh in on social movements, noting “divesting from politics is the wrong impulse.”

fossilfreeThe Stanford Fossil-Free team making a stand against Keystone XL (Image attributed to Fossil Free Stanford , 2013).

Guests on this week’s show include Stanford students Nicholas Reale and Jorge Masero of the Civil & Environmental Engineering department; Gregory Hall and Ian Girard of the Stanford Solar Car project; and Naomi Cornman, Co-President of the Green Living Council; Stanford Sociology Professor and Director Emeritus of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Doug McAdam;  Julie Muir, Community Relations Manager at Peninsula Sanitary Service, Inc; Dana Gunders, Project Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council; and Jacob Woodruff, Senior Scientist at SunPower Corp.

Hosted by Adam Pearson, Erik Olesund, Diane Wu, Mallory Smith, Sophia Vo.

Audio featured in this episode: ROTC sit-in at Old Union*, Stephen Schneider Memorial Lecture 2013, John F Kennedy Inaugural Address, data clip (and other sound effects from freesound.org), excerpts from a Claremont Colleges 3/4/13 Divestment event, Blue Ducks, Podington Bear, Broke For Free, Innocent Bandits, King Felix, Johnny Ripper, Aoiroooasamusi, and Dustin Wong.

*Stanford University, Office of Vice President and General Counsel, Records (SC0178). Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.


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Fo(u)r more on fish . . .

After we aired our ocean privatization episode a few weeks ago, I picked up “Four Fish” by Paul Greenberg. If you want to learn more about fisheries management, the development of aquaculture (so much fascinating science and history), read this book! Greenberg takes us from his childhood fishing haunts to an Alaskan fishing village, from deep off the coast of Hawaii to the Sinai peninsula. We zip back in time to when the Greeks named sea bass, take a peek at the peak and demise of the whaling industry, and get a thoughtful glimpse at different paths for the future of fish.

Image attributed to Greenberg/Penguin Books, (2011)

Perfect for reading on the beach this summer.


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Coming Up in S3E6: Is the Sustainability Movement an Activist Movement?

The next episode of Green Grid Radio formed out of the observation that many people in northern California are aware of energy and planetary challenges, as well as some solutions. But many young people simply do not fight for the social/environmental issues like college-aged Americans did once upon a time. We will debut the episode, “Is the Sustainability Movement an Activist Movement?” this Thursday evening, which dives into Stanford perspectives on sustainability and how to go about achieving social change in today’s world.

psuA group of Penn State students demonstrate in the 1960s (Attributed to Penn State University Libraries, “Years of Crises: The 1960s,” 2013).

As usual, you can listen live  on 90.1FM in the Bay Area or online at kzsulive.stanford.edu from 6-7PM PST Thursday. We will make the episode available for download from this site or from our iTunes podcast.


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Green Grid Radio Featured on Satellite Radio

On Saturday June 1st, the satellite XM radio program Green Is Good will spotlight Green Grid Radio. The program will air at 5pm EST on Sirius XM channel 244 (“America’s Talk Channel”). Green Grid Radio Founder, Adam Pearson, had a chance to speak with “Green is Good” host, John Shegerian, about how Green Grid Radio started, and some of the program’s educational goals.

Attributed to Sirius XM/Green is Good, 2013.

Tune in if you have XM radio. If you missed the episode, you can listen here.


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S3E5: The Lowest Hanging Fruit is The One in the Landfill

In this week’s episode, we’re covering food waste!! Listen below for some myth busting on expiration dates and the real story of what’s happening to those compostable forks.

P1040603A picture from our tour of the Newby Island Resource Recovery Park’s compost facility. This is a compost windrow before it gets filtered. Photograph by Diane Wu.

Guests include Stanford student Nicole Gaetjens; Julie Muir, Community Relations Manager at Peninsula Sanitary Service, Inc; Dana Gunders, Project Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council; and Elena Stamatakos and Mahta Baghoolizadeh, volunteers with the Stanford Project on Hunger.

Hosted by Diane Wu and Mallory Smith.

Resources mentioned in this podcast include stilltasty.com (Is your leftover pizza still good?), American Wasteland (Want to read a whole book about this?), and this NRDC report  (here are the highlights). Here’s more on the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act.

Music featured, in chronological order, by Bad Bats, Abe Sada, Cranston, The LibraryAnns, Mark Neil, Krackatoa.


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Coming up in S3E5: The Lowest Hanging Fruit is The One in the Landfill

This week on Green Grid Radio we’re bringing you an hour dedicated to the back of your fridge and the bottom of your trash can. Americans eat only sixty percent of the food that we produce each year – the remainder gets tossed somewhere along the path from the field to your table. Food waste is the largest single contributor to our landfills – but it doesn’t have to be. There are so many other options for the food we do not eat.

IMGP6780Plum. Photograph by Diane Wu.

We’ll bring you ideas from our guests Nicole Gaetjens (Stanford student and all around waste warrior), Julie Muir (Community Relations Manager at Peninsula Sanitary Service, Inc and waste industry insider), Dana Gunders (Project Scientist at NRDC and author of this report on food waste), Elena Stamatakos and Mahta Baghoolizadeh (Stanford students and volunteers with the Stanford Project on Hunger).

In our show we’ll visit the kitchen of the Faculty Club and the commercial compost facility where Stanford recycles some of its food waste into compost. Join us on Thursday from 6-7 PM at 90.1 FM or online at kzsulive.stanford.edu to listen live. We’ll also have our episode available online right here shortly afterwards, or you can find it in our iTunes podcast.


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S3E4: Overfished or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Cocaine Cowboy Fisheries and Love Catch Shares

Global consumption of fish is on the rise, and so we critically need to effectively manage how we catch fish and how much of it we catch. On “Overfished,” the Green Grid Radio team begin dives into this topic and understand what strategies may address the problems we see today in the open waters. We take perspectives from an economist, consumers, and even a fisherman.

A vessel with a trawling net, courtesy of EDF.

Image courtesy of EDF, EDFish blog (2013).

Featured voices are Professor John Lynham of the University of Hawaii, Stanford PhD candidate Dane Klinger, fisherman Hans Haveman of H&H Fresh Fish, salmon aficionado Elena Lawson, and Stanford undergraduate students Emma Budiansky and Tiffany Li. Hosted by Adam Pearson and Diane Wu.

(In case you’re interested, the FAO report mentioned in the episode is available here, while the study on fishermen opposing catch shares  can be found here. Music featured this episode includes: Love Cult, Johnny Ripper, Tristeza, Las Ardillas, The Curious Mystery, & Balmorhea).


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Coming Up in S3E4: Overfished or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Cocaine Cowboy Fisheries and Love Catch Shares

Hans Haveman of H&H Fresh Fish. Image attributed to Cuesa.org, “Catch of the Day: H&H Fresh Fish,” 2012.

Hello out there. We’ve taken a few weeks off to better prepare for our exciting, upcoming episodes. This Thursday will be the premiere of “Overfished or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Cocaine Cowboy Fisheries and Love Catch Shares.” Perhaps more succinctly, we’ll be honing in on the state of fish in our oceans, how things got to where they are, and what kind of management strategies may address the problems. Indeed with this episode, like with our episode on the Sharing Economy, we have jettisoned all obvious links to energy topics, as we continue to broaden our thematic scope for Green Grid Radio.

This week’s program will include many different voices, including folks who study this topic, fishermen, and even average fish consumers. Professor John Lynham of the University of Hawaii gives us the rundown on economics behind the overfishing phenomenon, aquaculture expert Dane Klinger joins us for his perspective, and we even spoke with Hans Haveman of H&H Fresh Fish about being a fisherman in Santa Cruz.

So tune into on Thursday May9th, 2013, from 6-7PM PST at KZSU Stanford 90.1FM or online at kzsulive.stanford.edu. The episode will also be available shortly thereafter on our site or in our iTunes podcast.


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Clinton Global Initiative Commitment – How We’re Doing

Green Grid Radio made a commitment to tackle environmental and energy education in November, 2012 for the Clinton Global Initiative University. This page will describe not only the commitment that was made initially, but will track the progress of how we’ve done.

CGI_U_2013_commitment-maker_seal

1. Summary of your CGI U Commitment to Action. The Green Grid Radio Initiative seeks to provide thought-provoking, educational, timely content about sustainable energy systems to listeners on a weekly basis. The goal is to catalyze citizens to vote in an informed manner, develop their own grassroots movements, seek out additional educational opportunities on energy and environmental subjects that pique their interests. By discussing real problems in candid interviews with academics, policymakers, and industry representatives, the Green Grid Radio Initiative effectively addresses the education and environmental/climate change focus areas of the Clinton Global Initiative.

2. CGI U students work to address specific global challenges. What is the problem or issue you are working to address? Our Initiative tackles problems in the focus areas of education and environment/climate change. There is a severe problem with the dissemination of scientific and factual information to the public, especially in these fields… We serve to communicate truthful and technical information about these technologies in an engaging manner to an information-inundated public (and serve educational/environmental GCI areas).

3. What activities will you/your group (and, if appropriate, your partners) undertake to address this issue? I have assembled a Green Grid Radio volunteer staff of like-minded, passionate environmentalists and activists. We produce a quality program week in and week out , yet there is tremendous room for growth and improvement. I would love to see our organization recruit a larger army of volunteers who are excited about the Initiative, so that I can spend more time teaching teammates how to produce a high-level program… We will ramp up this effort during the month of January.

4. How is this different from what you have done before? The program is already novel and new because there exists a significant lack of energy/environmental discussion in traditional radio media. Our local audience covers the majority of the San Francisco Bay Area, perhaps a highly educated group. But as the 2012 presidential election debates demonstrated, these topics often fall through the cracks in regular discourse, possibly due to the long-term nature of the climate change problem. But we cannot only think about our local listeners. One of the benefits of podcasting the show is that we can reach an international audience through the benefits of the free, transparent, accessible Internet. We can therefore imagine our educational reach has significant potential.

5. How will you know you are successful? Our specific, tangible goal is to reach 1000 subscribers to our podcast by September of 2013. We believe that if our program is relevant to 1000 people, we will be engaging with a sizeable international audience to think about and strongly consider the advantages of renewable energy systems as a means to combating climate change. It will not be easy—we will need to expand our volunteer staff expectations significantly—but the benefits of greater awareness will be a reward in itself.

So how are we doing?

We’ve put together some graphs, based on some tracking of our podcast and online presence over the last 6 months.

dailysubscribers

Figure 1. Daily subscribers, or how many times the feed has been requested on average in a 24-hr period.

rawhits

Figure 2. Daily “raw hits” plotted over time, by google feedburner highlighting website traffic growth (a “raw hit” is when someone loads a page that can access a download).

twitter

Figure 3. Weekly twitter “follower” counts plotted over time, highlighting growth.

Unfortunately we don’t have subscriber data right now (we are working on migrating our audio to one centralized source, so we can monitor this more accurately– right now we have our audio at different sites and it is hard to track). More info soon, but we certainly have a long way to go. Please help us reach our commitment by sharing or getting involved!